


Wood For The Trees

by scoradh



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-17
Updated: 2014-03-17
Packaged: 2018-01-16 02:06:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1327870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scoradh/pseuds/scoradh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, on a tennis court far far away...</p><p>Written in August 2006.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wood For The Trees

Atobe Keigo patted his hair. A few strands were refusing to sit the way they should. Atobe was seriously considering having Kabaji lay waste to them with a nail scissors.  
  
"Damn it," he muttered to himself. He had a date with that lovely boy from the art club, a chance to actually get laid before he graduated and a killer outfit. His hair seemed determined to foil the whole attempt. Next thing he knew he'd find a rash of spots and then he'd lose the will to live entirely.  
  
His reflection appeared to mock him, the corners of its mouth turning up in a most aggravating fashion. Atobe turned his back on it. He sank on to an easy chair and studied his trousers. Black leather and vermilion silk were almost too trash-fash for him, but he was determined to pull out all the stops.   
  
There were only two months of high school left. Despite the fact that Atobe was willing to try his hand (and any other appropriate anatomy) at both boys and girls in a bid to widen the playing field, he seemed to luck out every time. On the high school tennis circuit, only Tezuka was less sexually active than Atobe. Rumour had it that Tezuka had taken a ten-year vow of chastity while he saved himself for his one true love. Unless Tezuka was holding out for his tennis racquet, Atobe seriously doubted it.   
  
"Kabaji!" called Atobe.  
  
"Usu," echoed back, sounding like the rumble of far-off thunder. Kabaji sloped into the room, with that peculiar plodding walk that never slowed and never sped up but could be relied upon to continue until Kabaji encountered a wall or another person or the Pacific Ocean.  
  
"Come here," commanded Atobe, drumming his fingers on his thighs. The leather was slippery beneath his skin. On the one hand that could be construed as rather provocative, but on the other it called to mind sensations of fish bellies and tortured cows. Perhaps he should have stuck with the white linen.  
  
Kabaji materialised at the side of the chair, silent as a corpse. Unlike the rest of Atobe's acquaintances, who knocked themselves out trying to flatter and cajole their way into his good graces, Kabaji never sucked up. People thought he sucked off instead, but that was an even less validated rumour than the one about Tezuka's love vow. Kabaji was Atobe's rock and, like most other rocks that Atobe encountered, didn't take up more than a tiny percent of his attention.   
  
(Certainly, he had spent one instructive -- if highly intoxicated -- night teaching Kabaji how to kiss properly. Atobe couldn't entirely blame his sense of fair play for that. He'd rather wanted to know if there was anything that could stir Kabaji to towering passion. Perhaps such a thing did exist, but Atobe's kisses were not it.)   
  
"Smell my breath." Atobe opened his mouth. Kabaji obediently leaned down, his clothes rustling like leaves in a gale. Atobe exhaled a few times to be sure, and then asked, "What does it smell of?"  
  
Kabaji's expression didn't alter a whit. Several seconds passed. Atobe's fingers performed a drum solo on his knees.  
  
"Mint," offered Kabaji at last. "Mint ... toothpaste?"  
  
"Good," said Atobe in acute relief. He steeled himself to look in the mirror again, and winced. Black really wasn't his colour: it drained his face and made his hair look like Shishido's underpants. "Kabaji? Pass me those white trousers on the bed."  
  
"Usu."  
  
Atobe peeled off the leather trousers. Getting into them had been a tactical manoeuvre of immense proportions. Wearing underwear as well had proved to be an impossibility, so Atobe added, "And some boxers too, Kabaji. No, wait -- better make it briefs. White ones." He kicked the leather trousers under the bed for the maids to find.  
  
"These?" Kabaji held out the linen trousers and an unopened packet of Calvin Kleins. They looked like dolls' clothes in his huge hands.   
  
Atobe rolled his eyes. "You could at least have opened them." He tore off the packaging and stepped into the briefs, then plucked his trousers from Kabaji's waiting paw and did the same with those. He surveyed the result. The purple and white complemented each other well. They complemented Atobe even better.   
  
"Don't wait up," he advised Kabaji breezily. As if he would. Kabaji feel asleep on the dot of ten like an automaton, and had done as long as Atobe had known him.  
  
Kabaji nodded ponderously, as if Atobe had said something worth noting. "Usu."  
  
"Here I come," whispered Atobe, rubbing his hands together and smiling at his pun. Tonight was going to be the night.   
  
  
__  
  
  
  
Atobe strode into the diner, ice cream dripping from his Galliano shirt. "Do you have a napkin and a glass of water?" he snapped at the goggle-eyed girl serving the till.  
  
"We have some paper towels, and there's a water dispenser over there," she offered, pointing. Clearly they weren't paying her enough not to snigger at customers.  
  
Atobe ripped out a hank of paper towels -- although to call them that was stretching the term too far, because they felt more like corrugated iron -- and dabbed ineffectively at the spreading stain. Where was Kabaji when he needed him?  
  
As if on cue, Atobe heard a booming voice utter, "Usu." He spun around, almost expecting Kabaji to be standing there with a replacement shirt at the ready. Instead, he caught sight of half the regulars on the tennis team at a nearby table. They were grouped around a pile of burgers and chips that could have fed a Third World country for a month.  
  
Mukahi caught sight of Atobe first. "Buchou!" he called, brandishing a hot dog. "Come join us."  
  
"I rather think not." Atobe gave the shirt up as a bad job; it would have to be dumped, right along with his aspirations for the art club boy. "What are you all doing here?"  
  
"It's Friday night," replied Shishido. "What are _you_ doing here? I thought you had a hot date."  
  
"So did I," sighed Atobe. He might as well come clean, because it would be all around school by eight am on Monday. "Unfortunately, my date did not. Even more unfortunately, he had an ice cream cone in his hand when I made a move. Someone ought to tell him that frozen dairy products are not weapons."  
  
"You're probably better off without him, buchou," said Ohtori earnestly. "I mean, if he didn't even realise --"  
  
"Yes, thank you, I figured that much already," snapped Atobe, earning himself a burning glare from Shishido.   
  
Atobe's gaze travelled around the table. Kabaji was hemmed into the corner of the booth, chugging down a vanilla milkshake. The cup didn't look any different from the dozens of others cluttering the table, but Atobe had bought enough vanilla milkshakes for Kabaji to know his tastes. If it wasn't vanilla milkshakes it would be Pocari Sweat, and that came in a can.  
  
Mukahi followed his gaze and grinned evilly. "So if you're dateless and you're not going to hang with us, what are you going to do -- buchou?"  
  
"I'm going home," said Atobe. "Come, Kabaji."  
  
"Hey-hey," protested Mukahi. "Kabaji's with us tonight."  
  
Atobe tweaked wet cloth away from his skin, feeling the usual throb of resentment he got from being thwarted. "Correction. Kabaji was with you. Now he's with me."  
  
"Gakuto," said Oshitori in a warning tone. Mukahi was not to be deterred.   
  
"We invited him to come with us. You can't just demand that he leave. He's not your slave."  
  
"I know that." Atobe rolled his eyes. "Are you coming, Kabaji?"  
  
"Usu." Kabaji drained his milkshake and stood up.   
  
Mukahi slid out of the booth to let Kabaji pass, his face mutinous. "What's up with you, Atobe-kun?" he hissed. "Can't you let Kabaji do what he wants for one night?"  
  
"It's okay." Kabaji's soft purl made Mukahi's eyebrows disappear beneath his fringe.   
  
"See?" said Atobe smugly. Far from looking chastened, Mukahi appeared dangerously thoughtful.   
  
Lest he get ideas about a second ice cream and missile deployment, Atobe hurried Kabaji out of the diner and made him flag down a cab. Atobe had fondly imagined that he wouldn't need his car for at least another three hours, while he put the top-class karaoke room he'd booked to the use for which it was intended.   
  
As Kabaji dealt with the taxi driver and handed over Atobe's credit card, Atobe reflected on how the night had gone so disastrously wrong. He'd been keen on this one, which was perhaps why he'd confused enthusiasm for Atobe's wallet with enthusiasm for Atobe's pants. Certainly the art boy had felt no qualms about sticking Atobe with the bill for his huge meal and a number of ice creams that had ended up in his stomach instead of Atobe's shirt.  
  
"I feel truly awful," he informed Kabaji as they padded up the stairs to Atobe's suite. Atobe was being half-carried by Kabaji, leaning into his shoulder as they climbed. It was like napping on a mountain.  
  
"Playstation?"   
  
"No." Kabaji wasn't skilled with the controls; his hands were too big, although his reaction time otherwise would have been second-to-none.   
  
"Movie?"  
  
Atobe shook his head. "I think I just want to run a bath and go to bed."  
  
"You need a maid?"  
  
"No. You'll do it for me, won't you?" Atobe sank on to his bed. Sure enough, a few seconds later the sounds of water hitting marble trickled through from his bathroom.  
  
Warm hands closed around his ankles, tugging off his socks. Atobe lifted his hips a little and considered buying a soap girl for the night, as Kabaji carefully removed his trousers and folded them up. Atobe almost instantly dismissed the idea of paying for sex, as he had done every other time. He didn't want to turn into his father.   
  
Kabaji was having a bit of trouble with the fiddly buttons on Atobe's shirt. Atobe sat up with a sigh, shrugging him off. "It's ruined, no point in unbuttoning it," he said. He gripped the collar and tried to tear it apart, but the delicate fabric was surprisingly strong. Then Kabaji's hands were pushing his aside and splitting the silk down an almost perfect line, as easily as if it were tissue paper. Atobe grinned for the first time since the ice cream hit his chest. Buttons sprayed everywhere.   
  
Atobe let the ragged remains slide to the floor as he stood up and hooked his thumbs under the waistband of his briefs. "Is the bath ready?"  
  
"Usu." Kabaji hesitated. "Didn't put bubbles in."  
  
"It doesn't matter." Atobe yawned and pushed his underwear down. As he straightened up he caught sight of his pale body in the mirror, shadowed by Kabaji's hulking frame. "Are you hungry, Kabaji?"  
  
Kabaji shook his head. "Ate at the burger place."  
  
Atobe ignored this. "Ring the kitchen and have them send up some omuraisu and tea. And whatever you want."  
  
"Usu."  
  
After scrubbing himself down with lavender soap, Atobe sank into the bath. It stung and he could see his skin coming up in reddish blotches from the heat, but that was how he liked it. Kabaji was good at running baths, even though he nearly always forgot the scented oils and unguents.   
  
Atobe noticed to his annoyance that there were no clean towels. The dirty ones from his earlier bath had been cleared away, but housekeeping hadn't replaced them. They were terribly inefficient. Atobe started to compose an angry speech in his head to present to the head maid in the morning, but the hot bath was working its magic. By the time his fingers were wrinkled like antique prunes, he hardly cared.  
  
He wandered back into his room trailing wet footprints. He spied a velvet comforter on one of the chairs and slung it around his shoulders before going to his bed to prod at Kabaji. He looked like he'd fallen asleep. It was ten oh five, after all.  
  
"Usu," mumbled Kabaji, as Atobe's hair dripped on to his face.   
  
Atobe settled back against Kabaji's comforting bulk. "I don't know what I'm doing wrong, Kabaji. How do I always manage to hit on people who don't like me?"  
  
His only reply was a muffled grunt. That was fine -- Atobe didn't really want to know the answer. "Back to the drawing board, I suppose. I think I'll have to try girls again." He frowned. The prospect was oddly unappealing. "Although ... boys are nicer. Harder." He shivered, thinking of the contrast between sharp planes of muscle and cloth-covered bulges. And sometimes not so cloth-covered. The changing rooms were crowded places and Atobe was only human -- not that he'd admit that to anyone. "I'd really prefer a boy. Oh, well."   
  
"Usu." Kabaji shifted so that Atobe's head was nestled into the crook of his arm. He didn't seem to mind that Atobe's hair -- and in fact Atobe's everything -- was making his shirt all wet.  
  
Kabaji's chest was about as comfortable as a concrete pillow, but Atobe didn't feel inclined to move. The combination of velvet and Kabaji's intense body heat were drying his skin nicely. In a minute he'd have to go find a comb and moisturising cream and begin his nighttime routine, but for now it was nice just to lie against -- on -- Kabaji and rest.   
  
Atobe shifted a little, feeling cloth slide against his skin. It didn't disguise the solid weight of the body beneath. He considered it for a moment, sliding into a state of heightened awareness as easily as if he were playing a game of tennis. Kabaji was all boy. And he was _made_ of rigid angles; there was nothing remotely pliant about him.  
  
Kabaji's stomach was as solid as oak when Atobe's fingers tiptoed across it. Experimentally hooking his leg around Kabaji's was like straddling a steel girder.   
  
"Atobe-kun?" said Kabaji uncertainly, as Atobe curiously explored the tight tendons in his neck.  
  
But when Atobe kissed him he opened his mouth like he'd been expecting it. His tongue pushed in past Atobe's lips, all hot and good, and his hands were tight as vices on Atobe's bare hips.   
  
"Kabaji," Atobe managed to gasp, when the velvet blanket, Kabaji's clothes and most of the bed linen was strewn across the room.  
  
"Usu," said Kabaji against his neck, his voice improbably huskier than usual. His thick fingers _twisted_ and Atobe cried out and after that there were no more words.  
  
  
__  
  
  
  
Nobody noticed the way Kabaji's eyes lit up now when Atobe said, "Come, Kabaji." Or the purring quality of Atobe's voice as it caressed the first word and teased the second.  
  
Then again -- as Mukahi said to Oshitari -- "You owe me forty thousand yen."


End file.
